Orlando Anderson: 'Tupac Was My Hero'

Original: “Shakur suspect: I was a fan” · Associated Press, reprinted in the Las Vegas Sun · no byline · September 16, 1997

A Suspect Calls Tupac His Hero

One year after the shooting, the man investigators had treated as a suspect for months broke his silence: Orlando Anderson, 23, of Lakewood near Los Angeles. The AP relayed an interview from the Los Angeles Times.

Anderson stated that he had bought every Tupac record and followed his career to the end: “To me, Tupac was like a hero. I admired him. I respected his music.” He denied having anything to do with the murder. Police viewed him as a member of the Southside Crips; he called himself an aspiring screenwriter who was being falsely accused.

The occasion was a lawsuit: the previous Friday, Afeni Shakur had sued Anderson for wrongful death, alleging that he fired the fatal shots. She relied on an affidavit from the Compton police describing Tupac’s death as the result of a feud between the Southside Crips and Death Row associates tied to the Mob Piru Bloods. Anderson countered: “That entire affidavit is fiction.”

Four days before her suit, Anderson had filed his own: he sought nearly $1 million from the estate because Tupac and Death Row associates had beaten him at the MGM Grand hours before the crime. Las Vegas police, he claimed, had told him in October 1996 that he was no longer a suspect.

No Charges During His Lifetime, a Guilty Verdict in 2026

Anderson was never charged. On May 29, 1998, he died in a shootout at a Compton car wash that had nothing to do with the Tupac case. In the summer of 2000, Tupac’s estate and Anderson’s estate settled their mutual lawsuits.

Today, Anderson’s protestations read differently. Beginning in 2018, his uncle Duane “Keffe D” Davis stated publicly that Anderson had been in the white Cadillac with him that night-in the back seat, where the shots came from. On August 31, 2026, Davis was found guilty of murder in Las Vegas (not final, as of October 2026). The prosecution did not name the shooter; according to Al Jazeera, Davis passed the gun to someone in the back seat. Whether Anderson or another occupant pulled the trigger has not been legally established-and likely never will be, since all the other occupants are dead.